The Indiana Fever keep winning without star guard Caitlin Clark, begging the question: How?
At the beginning of the 2025 season, the Fever had championship expectations. They had just finished a successful offseason, bringing in a new coach, Stephanie White, and a few players, DeWanna Bonner, Natasha Cloud and Sophie Cunningham, to help them get there. However, it hasn’t played out as the likely imagined. Five players have been lost to season-ending injuries, setting the Fever up for a rough end to the year.
Still, through all the obstacles, Indiana is going strong. So, the question becomes: How are the Fever cruising through the WNBA playoffs without Clark? Here are three reasons why they are stacking win after win.
1. The Indiana Fever have depth ― a lot of it
Due to injury, Clark played 13 games in 2025, which means the Fever spent a significant amount of time without her, trying to replicate a fraction of what she brings to the team. That’s hard to do. It’s like taking the engine out of a car and trying to drive it anyway. (Hint: That doesn’t work.) So the Fever turned to their depth, which included guards Kelsey Mitchell, Lexie Hull, Cunningham, Sydney Colson and Aari McDonald. Then, in a wild twist of events, the depth got hurt. Cunningham, Colson and McDonald all suffered season-ending injuries, putting Indiana at a real disadvantage.
Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there. The forwards on the team were impacted, too. Chloe Bibby also had a season-ending injury. Damiris Dantas missed the entire first round of the 2025 playoffs with a concussion. So, how is Indiana still going after all of that sort of turmoil? The Fever have depth ― a lot of it. The team’s front office deserves a ton of credit for going out and signing guards Odyssey Sims and Shey Peddy for relief. They also drafted forward Makayla Timpson and signing veteran Brianna Turner.
Sims and Peddy have extensive WNBA experience and seamlessly integrated into the Fever’s system after just a few games. Timspon and Turner were further down in the depth chart, but have played critical minutes as the season went on. All four players, plus Mitchell, Hull, forward Natasha Howard and center Aliyah Boston, have become crucial to the Fever’s success in the back half of the season. The Fever don’t upset the No. 3 seed Dream and steal a game from the No. 2 seed Aces in the playoffs without the contributions.
2. Stephanie White’s WNBA playoffs coaching clinic
As of the publishing of this story, Fever coach Stephanie White has 30 games of playoff experience in the WNBA. She’s led teams on deep playoff runs three separate times between her tenures with Indiana and the Connecticut Sun. In other words, White is not new to this. She’s true to this. Quite frankly, she and her staff deserve a lot more credit for what they have done to keep the Fever operating at a high level. That’s likely a lot of hours of film study, clipboard work and the unseen moments of pouring into players to get the most of them.
Perhaps what is most impressive about White’s current run with the Fever is her ability to not only come equipped with a formidable game plan but also to deploy timely adjustments. It often goes under the radar, but it’s that sort of work that has the Fever in the semifinals. For example, deploying Peddy in the waning minutes of Game 3 against the Atlanta Dream when the Fever’s season was seemingly on the line. Peddy immediately hit a 3-pointer and caused a deflection moments later, which went onto ignite a series-sealing momentum shift. That sort of small in the moment but ultimately large decision is a glimpse of not only White’s thought process and brilliance, but the trust in her players to execute.
3. The Fever are extremely resilient
As cliché as it sounds, the Fever are a resilient team. They are playing inspired basketball, with a lot of energy and intensity. That’s probably a walking nightmare for opposing teams to deal with because Indiana is already one of the most prolific teams in the league when fully healthy. What’s more, it’s likely motivating for the team that not many people expected the Fever to be in the second round of the playoffs, given all the injuries and, at times, the up-and-down nature of their season.
That sort of belief in one another and White is noteworthy, and ignites a much larger conversation. Could the Fever actually win it all without Clark? Then, if they were to win a championship this season without their top player, how many could they potentially win with Clark once she returns?
